Let the sowing begin in the garden in March

Hello, what do you say ? It's March already ?  Where did the weeks go.

Ah well, here's the seeds that are sitting in my propagators:

Tomatoes:

Rose de Berne
San Marzano
Franchi Red Pear
Yellow Perfection
Costoluto Fiorentino
Isis Candy
- and a mini red plum tomato from seed saved by my dad from a plant found growing on the edge of a building site in Rotherham !

Sweet peppers:
Giallo d'Asti
Gypsy
Doce di Espanha (or Dulce de Espana, but I bought my seed in Portugal)
- and a mini red pepper seed saved from a supermarket fruit, which was really tasty.  An experiment.

Chillies  ():
Mulato
Ancho
Thai Dragon
Ohnivec
Early Jalapeno
Ecuadorian Devil's breath
Red Savina

The last was the hottest chilli in the world up to 2008, when the ridiculously hot Nagas came on the market.   Unlike those machismo testing chillies though, Red Savina has a superb fruity flavour that is worth the pain in Caribbean cookery  

I've just sowed Giallo d'Asti for the second time - I mistook the first lot for some cucumber seeds which hadn't germinated and tipped them all out onto the garden!

For the record my showings are:-
Sweet peppers - Kaibi, Lipstick and Romaine
Chilli - Paliver
Tomatoes - Sungold, Black cherry, Auntie Madge, Fence row, Ruby, Tasha, San Marzano and another Italian one whose name I can't remember and I don't want to go out in the dark to look.

Continuing from a mention back im the February garden, my dad was also lamenting the disappearance of Heirloom tomatoes. I had a search on the web to check, but they seem to have vanished without trace. It is a shame, because dad used to look forward to seeing them at Harrogate for a natter.

I'm guessing it is hard to compete in that market; there are a few places having at least some obscure tomatoes and chillies, and quite a lot can be found om ebay. I guess it is easy and profitable to buy seed packed for commmercial use and split it into many small hobby packs, given a fairly cheap way to sell them such as ebay.

I find Nickys nursery seeds to have a good range of interesting stuff.

La la la la (fingers in ears) LA LA LA ...... I'M NOT LISTENING.

Desperate to get out in garden, but absolutely have to finish this decorating first. Just going to cut some pieces of wallpaper before I go out to work.

freebird wrote:La la la la (fingers in ears) LA LA LA ...... I'M NOT LISTENING.

Desperate to get out in garden, but absolutely have to finish this decorating first. Just going to cut some pieces of wallpaper before I go out to work.

I have tomatoes ! About 75% emergence, which is not too bad given some of the seed are a bit dated. Beetroot and spinach for baby leaf salad is up too.

I went the allotment to do a bit of tidying yesterday. It is still very soggy. I hand pulled the worst of the weeds from the strawberry bed, but it will be some time before I can do much. Even the track down to it is too wet for vehicular access, so I'll have to wait to get woodchip for the paths and manure for the beds delivered.

I was taken by surprise by my tomatoes - all bar 2 varieties germinated in 3 days, the last two have come through now. I've been juggling plants under lights and still bringing them into the house at night as most nights are round about freezing or below & having got this far I don't want them to keel over.

I'm impressed with the lights - I've got some pepper seedlings (Kaibi) about 4" high that I transplanted into separate pots yesterday. They're romping ahead of all my others.
My seed potatoes (Rocket) in the pt are just about showing at the soil surface and the broad beans are coming into flower.

The broad beans are in flower here too - I had planted them out, and put a cold frame over the top to protect them from the cold weather. At the weekend I realised that the lid had been down all week, and quickly raised it to allow pollinators in. That's the difficult thing about going out to work at this time of the year - it would be nice to be at home and to be able to open windows in the greenhouse mid morning, as well as monitor the cold frame.

Ah yes. Propagators in a greenhouse are quite a bother to look after at this time of year. Yesterday I went to work without opening them up, and Mrs C-H was out. Slightly scorched beetroot and San Marzano tomato seedlings, hopefully it won't be a total loss.

The propagator with the chillies has a thermostatic heater, so at least that takes care of itself. It all gets much easier in my big propagator later on, but I need to get the overwintering ornamentals out of the way to set that up.

No seed sowing here but I have been clearing and trimming. Will probably just sow odds and ends of old packets as we are still thinking about house-hunting though progress on that is almost non-existent!

I had the day off work yesterday celebrating another year older, so I did find time to sneak out in the garden to work off a very large lunch !  Not a lot done, but I sowed a second row of broad beans; the overwintering ones at the allotment have almost drowned this year !

Wet is why I never bother to try and overwinter outdoors here. First seed potatoes breaking through in the polytunnel. We're still getting below freezing temps most nights which is slowing things down.

First peppers popped up at the weekend Only a small red sweet pepper, from seed saved from a supermarket pepper that was quite tasty. Freshest seed emerge first though, perhaps no coincidence. It will be interesting to see if they come true to type or turn out a surprise !

I'm doing a bit of cheating this year. Still strapped for time, but missing some home grown veg, I've bought some tomato and pepper plants today. I hadn't intended to, but the garden centre had a really good choice of vegetables and varieties (probably in time for the Easter crowd). I'm planning to grow them on in the greenhouse - when I've replaced the two broken panes of glass, and cleared away the dead stuff from 2 years ago.

I'll sow some salad leaves - hoping my seed will still be viable. Some of it was my own so was very fresh.

And a question - I had some strawberries in a pot, which haven't survived the winter. I assumed they had become saturated and rotted in the wet winter. Bought some to replace, intending to plant in same pot and compost, and top dress, but found the pot is infested with vine weevils.

I will empty the pot now and put in fresh compost, but what to do with the old stuff? I've been picking the little buggers out and putting them on the bird table, but can't be sure I won't miss some.

Any ideas?

I would empty the compost out onto a spare bit of the garden, rake it over and let the blackbirds have a go. That way if there are any eggs or developing grubs it gives the birds a chance to find them. I had a similar problem, funnily enough with a big pot of strawberries, but as I dug it over I found the grubs fairly easy to see and remove.

That's just what I was going to say, I did exactly the same thing. I have only ever had problems with vine weevil in strawberry planters, and came to the conclusion that you can't grow strawberries in pots without problems. There is a biological control available, but like most biological controls, it isn't a cheap way.

I'm now looking for an alternative use for one of those strawberry pots with the holes in the sides. They look lovely, but the strawberries in the holes never grew well and it is hard to water them all without washing the soil out of the holes. Suggestions welcome !

I only ever grown strawberries in containers (hanging baskets)and have never seen vine weevil. Some herbs can do ok in a strawberry pot and they tend to need less watering. I recall when I had one I put a piece of perforated pipe down the centre to get water into the middle. Some busy lizzies or other not too traily flowers would probably be happy in one too.

So far, so good with my sowing, the only no show I've had was romaine peppers from the seed swap and I've had two attempts. I've got a few mange tout sprouted to go into the polytunnel and I can just see a cucumber poking through. I may not be quite so keen on such an early start again but being my first year with the tunnel I wanted to see how far I could push it. I would normally be doing my first sowings now.

Ploshkin wrote:I only ever grown strawberries in containers (hanging baskets)and have never seen vine weevil.  

Now ... I think I might try that. Whether the hanging basket is a less good environment for vine weevil, or whether it is something to do with our climates I don't know. But I had a hanging basket in a sunny spot for a small tomato bush last year, the blight got it so I don't think I'll do that again - maybe try some strawberry runners instead.

Finally manged to do a bit of sowing over the Easter w/e. Never worth trying to go anywhere when you live in a tourist area especially as there are extensive road works on the major route through to Bournemouth and the traffic queues down the other two available routes.
Tidied up one of the raised beds and chucked in a few half-rows of various easy seeds from old, but sensibly stored, packets, I'm also going to buy a few plants of things I want so I have salad veg at the very least.
Vine weevil in strawb pot info is useful, thanks. I'm almost hoping i'll find some as the chickens will love a nice treat

I finally got the few early potatoes I'm growing this year into the ground. That was a small job, were it not for digging out the composty heap to give them some organic matter ! So whilst I was at it the rest of the veg plot got a mulch, and I sifted about 150L or so to make tomato compost.

... Speaking of which, my tomatoes are at two true leaves now, so need potting on at the weekend. Got a few chillies up now, but a poor showing on sweet peppers, and no sign of the Habaneros yet. But they often take ages.

I've only done one chilli type but they're doing well. Sweet pepper Kaibi are romping away and need repotting already. Lipstick peppers are being pathetic, they're small, miserable and yellow and they've been treated exactly the same as Kaibi.

I've sowed some salad leaves!